


Superwham!

by thegreatgatesy



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Adult Content, Bad Cops, Cats, City Underbelly, Corruption, Crime, Double Lives, First Person, I know, M/M, Office Work, Strong Language, Superheroes, Violence, scary government officials, spoilers and tw in tags!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-10
Updated: 2015-09-10
Packaged: 2018-04-20 02:55:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4770830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegreatgatesy/pseuds/thegreatgatesy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just because he’s only saving the world for approximately 2% of his daily life doesn't mean that he's not a super hero. Cas is a busy man; between his office job, taking care of his dumb cat, and running Joshua’s Honey Etsy site (not to mention the life-saving and dealing with the mayor’s insistence that nothing is wrong in his city) he’s pounding coffee and forgetting what ‘well-rested’ is like. Enter Dean, who is insistent on Cas’s confession of superherodom. And who is involved in some maybe-not-entirely-on-the-up-and-up practices himself. And who has a tendency to get kidnapped.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Superwham!

           Just because I’m only saving the world for approximately 2% of my daily life doesn't mean that I’m not a super hero. It means I’m a busy man.

           I just mean to say that I do a lot in a day. The damned mayor isn’t going to just pay me money to beat up assholes and save lives --- that would be admitting there was a problem in his city in the first place --- so I have to work like an everyman. I’ve got an office job and I run an etsy store on the side selling… well. The point is that a man has to keep the food on the table. And the kibble in the bowl for his ugly cat. And when’s the last time you bought a full spandex suit? Spandex is unnecessarily expensive, plus it rips all the time so it’s a real money hole (I’ve actually found some really affordable fixes for runs and tears.)

           So you can’t say that I’m not a superhero just because I average a couple of hours a night with active hero duty. I am super as hell.  And all right I don’t fly or shoot laser beams from my orifices, but my success rate for taking down criminals is at 87%, up 6% from last year, and that’s better than Batman’s. Well, Batman’s fictional, but you get the point. I’m good at what I do.

           The problem is that it keeps me busy; I never don’t have bags under my eyes at my cubicle, downing diesel piss office coffee and glaring at spreadsheets. I love spreadsheets the way some people love foreign languages. They make sense to me, they click. But when I am out until three in the morning running after some horrible man who thinks snatching the purse off drunk girls’ arms is a lucrative business model, those pivot tables can look pretty blurry. Maybe I need glasses. How Clark Kent of me. (Superman only has a 73% success rate, even less if you count civilian casualties.)

           Oh, hey, here’s Ripley. What’s she talking to me about? She’s excited about something, her hair is all frizzed out and her blouse has come untucked from her belted pants. I should probably nod and chuckle. No. No, nodding was a bad idea, she knows I wasn’t paying attention. Abort.

           “So what makes you think it’s a good thing those highway signs run XP? I mean really they might as well put up ‘hack me, I’m easy!’.”

           “Well. It’s cheap.”

           “Of course it’s cheap! That’s what I’m saying! It’s cheap, so everyone uses it, and everyone uses it so everyone figured out how to hack it, not that it was so hard in the first place. And those signs? The ones that tell you flight information at the airport? Guess what they run.”

           “…XP?”

           “Right! XP! Hack central.”

           “You know, I guess you’re right, Ripley.”

           “I know I’m right! But try convincing the city, they’ll never listen.”

           Of course I already know that from personal experience.

           Spreadsheets. Numbers. Percentages. Okay. If 73% of the customers surveyed said your uniforms were too conservative and 5% said they needed to ‘show more boobs’, you should change your uniforms. How can we make the numbers in the report reflect that without showing just how misogynistic the customers can be?

           Coffee. I need more coffee.

           In the break room there are people milling around because the intern has put out Snack time. Animal crackers; I hate animal crackers. I just want coffee. People. People I just want coffee. Yeah, I know, crazy about those hacked signs! Haha, what are the odds. You know I hear they run XP. I know! So easy to hack. Right? I just want coffee. Please move. Caffeine. You understand.

           Aaah. Crappy preground shelved coffee with city tap water pushed through it by a shoddy old percolator, but it does the job.

           Back to the cube.

           Spreadsheets.

 

 

           There’s an underground to the city.

           That is true in a figurative sense, in the way there is so much happening under your nose, under the façade of people scurrying from work to fun to home to work again; people begging for change, people protesting change, people dealing with divorce or births or deaths and no one’s the wiser.

           In this city though, in my city, there is a literal underground.

           In the 1950s, the City was sprawling and The Place to work and play, but people were a little weird about it. The big scary city! So many people! So much crime! To help cut down on that fear, the Powers that Be implemented a terrifying underground tunnel for pedestrians travelling from the suburbs to walk straight from their train stations to underground entrances in the nicest and hippest of buildings.

           This was great because in the rain or snow you could stay dry! Your fancy business suits will say crisp and smog free, your comb-overs will stay combed right where they belong, no wind can muss YOU up!

           Something I guess no one considered was the fact that that was a total draw to the figurative underground too; the sanctuary of the underground tunnels and passageways soon became home to down on their luck homeless people, drug deals, and giant rats, which as I’m sure you can imagine was NOT what the City wanted at all.

           The actual funny thing about it is that these tunnels still exist, either because it was too expensive to fill them in or they thought they’d make a come-back. So next time you’re walking around in the city proper, crossing past City Hall, grabbing a lunch or having your cigarette break, think about the whole society of people living under your feet. Sure, police and security try to flush people out, but that doesn’t keep Vincent from playing his violin directly under the intersection of 7th and Spruce, and if you listen closely you can even hear him above ground on a still day.

           I would not recommend the Underground as a viable travel option, especially if you’re a tourist. It’s not a happy place to be, not a safe place. If you’re jumpy cutting through an alley at nine o'clock at night, for the love of god do not come down here.

           When I’m walking from point a to point b I always think of Jason Vorhees and how no matter how slowly it looked like he was walking or how quickly you run, he’s always right there. In The Underground it’s a lot like that; you are Jason. Aboveground there’s light and talking and way too many people to get anywhere in any reasonable amount of time, but a quick duck into the subway station, follow a path, and pop back up on the other side of town ten minutes later and it feels like magic.

           Once I’m finished with work for the day, I take the elevator to the lowest floor of the building, the dusty underbelly of the sparkling office space everyone assumes is for maintenance and deliveries, and I push through a set of doors into an even dingier passageway, wide as the great hallways upstairs but not quite as tall. I can hear dripping like it’s coming from speakers embedded in the walls, coming from all over, and I walk.

           This is every day for me. Dim lighting from the grates, people napping against the wall. Somebody took the Aboveground and simmered all the light and happiness off until they were left with this cloudy fluid that sticks to the sides of the pans. Vincent playing his violin sounds like the beginnings of an old Tom Waits song, and I toss a couple of bucks in his case. He never asks, I never pass by without giving him something. He could be an amazing violinist, sitting tall in an orchestra, but his clothes are a bit too raggedy and his hair too long, his eyes milky with cataracts. I am his audience. I wonder if anyone else hears him? I’m usually the only one awake down here.

           I go through the grungy doors to a lesser-known entrance to a train station and follow the smell of a chain coffee shop into brighter, fluorescent lights. I place an order for the largest coffee I can buy, with extra cream and artificial sweetener because I don’t like it very much, then exit the station above ground to see the first swatches of sunlight I’d seen since this morning as it disappears behind the buildings. Another two blocks and I’m home. The key is in the door to let me in the lobby when I forget that I had meant to get damned kibble for the damned cat. I debate going back out into the encroaching night, but sigh and commit to giving him a can of tuna until I get out later.  Lucky bastard.

           I nod to some neighbor I’ve never bothered to remember the name of as she gets her mail; she smiles brightly and the thought crosses my mind that it must be a lonely life when a nod from an unremarkable stranger makes you glow like that.

           When I open the door Spartacus is there mewling, like we both don’t know that he just wants food.

           “You’re in for a treat there, Spartacus. Your natural prey; canned tuna.”

           He blinks green eyes at me as I uncover a can opener and set it to the can, and the minute the round blade punctures tin his yowling increases in volume.

           “I know, I can hear you. Yes, I understand very well how hard it is to sit at home alone all day. You lead a very difficult life. Here is some tuna.”

           Spartacus reows and swirls around my leg as I set the bowl down and darts in for dinner.

 

\-----

 

          The night is extra dark, purple stormy skies promising rain and humidity squeezing through my suit as I walk down Main Street. I’m in that weird state that exists near hyper-awareness that lets part of my mind wander as I let the rest of my sense focus on sights and sounds that might mean trouble, so on the block before Juniper I’m thinking about my suit. Specifically I’m thinking about how the weather is getting cooler and I’m tired of repairing spandex- it’s so easy to move in, but that’s just about its only benefit. Tonight I foresaw the problem of rain and am wearing an old trench coat that isn’t doing much good.

          I’m thinking about buying a nice running suit - maybe something reflective so I stop having near-collisions with cyclists in the fog - when I hear the scuffling and the sound of a rough voice saying something that sounds suspiciously like ‘you hit like a girl, did your mama teach you?’

          I round the corner just in time to see a man with giant shoulders rearing back to land another punch on the bloody face of the guy his friend is holding back. I move behind him - I can be quite stealthy when situation calls for it, but all the caffeine in my system has made me too jittery and I stumble over a glass bottle that clatters across the grungy brick and alerts the Puncher of my presence.

          He turns to look at me, redirecting his scowl, and for a moment I worry about being outnumbered before the Punched slides lithely out of the mugger’s arms and throws his own punch. He yells at Puncher about ‘asking her when I see her tonight’ and kicks his knees out from under him before running out of the alleyway and grabbing my coat sleeve along the way.

          I sigh and run after him because I really could have (and should have) incapacitated those men and taken them to the detention center, but I don’t have long to think about it because I can hear swearing and pounding footsteps behind us. I put on a burst of speed and shove the Punched man (who is irritatingly whooping as if he’s having the time of his life, by the way) into a subway entrance, which he takes more gracefully than I had anticipated.

          I cover his mouth with my hand because he is still far too loud, making us more likely to get noticed, and hold my breath in hopes they didn’t see us come down the stairs and overshoot us completely. Of course with the night I’ve been having I hear the Puncher yelling about the subway and don’t have much time to think- I shove the Punched man further into the subway, steering him over turnstile and towards an eastern tunnel.

          If the Punched man were a normal person he would probably be at the very least slightly worried about a man wearing admittedly shoddily repaired spandex and a stained khaki coat pushing him into the darkest part of the subway tunnels, but either this man is actually insane or does this sort of thing regularly; neither of those options sounds particularly pleasant for me, but I run on, regulating my breathing. He is starting to slow down, so I slip ahead of him to lead him towards the slight incline that leads away from the subway and to the more central viaduct where I can hear the faint sounds of the violin if I listen closely.

          We reach a slight alcove that is occasionally occupied by the less fortunate and I pull the Punched man into it to wait quietly. After approximately two and a half minutes he is speaking.

          “This place is awesome. What is it?”

          “You should probably be quiet,” I whisper with potentially more harshness than I intended.

          “How did you know this was here?” He asks in the same tone of voice as before- too bright for this dingy tunnel, sure to lure our troublemakers straight to us .

           My sigh is justified, I feel. My head hits the wall behind me solidly as I debate completely ignoring this man. I can hear voices from the direction we came grow louder and softer again as they move away, so I push out of the alcove and begin heading to the center of the city again. I figure the Punched guy can find his way out by backtracking, or even following me out, but what I don’t count on is that he will not stop talking.

           I learn quickly that his name is Dean Winchester and that he lives in the NorthEast - “But, like, not the bad North East, just kind of Northeast, near the bars and stuff all the college kids go to.” The only time he’s quiet is when I mention that he must be near the art museum and the library. For a moment I can feel him looking at me, his eyes flicking away in a green reflection of the dim light when I turn to see him, and then he smiles and starts speaking again, now about his brother Sam who “totally loves all that nerd stuff, those are like his two favorite places in the city.”

          “Your brother is wise and has good taste,” I assure him.

          “Oh definitely, he’s a lot better at all of the culture stuff than me. But I’d like to see him try to hustle pool. You’d think with how smart he is he’d figure it out…”

          I can see the light of the passage to the train station ahead. “Is that what you were doing? Why those men were after you?” I stop walking to look at him again, and he looks ashamed and I can tell before he opens his mouth that he’s going to change the subject.

          “I didn’t get your name…”

          “Castiel. Novak.” I reach out to shake his hand. He doesn’t owe me an explanation. I haven’t given him anything but my time; I hardly saved his life.

          Dean reaches out to take my hand, smile in place again. “It was nice meeting you, Cas. I think I can take it from here… ah… thanks. For. You know.”

          I nod at him and notice how his skin feels like sandpaper against my palm. He’s had a hard life. Harder than mine.

          I have been told many times that I am “awkward”, that my “people skills” are “rusty.” I think this handshake has been going on for too long, and I’ve been looking at him for too long. “It was honestly no problem.”

          Dean begins to walk away, but turns back before he fully reaches the light. “Oh, Cas? Your pantyhose are ripped.”

          “What?” I look down at where my legs poke out of the edge of my coat and notice that he is somewhat correct; a pre-stitched seam in my tights has come out. Again. “...oh. Yes. It would appear so.” I frown at the skin of my calf and expect Dean to leave, but he hasn’t moved.

          “Cas?”

          “Yes, Dean.”

          “Why are you wearing pantyhose?”

 

\----------

 

          Dean and I are sitting in the closest bar to the train station. It’s nearing midnight and he is trying to convince me that I am a superhero.

          My general rule on the subject is that I neither talk to people when I’m in my suit nor ever admit that I’m a superhero. I also never tell people my name (or the name the news networks have given me, 'Dark Angel; like I'm some television show or something). I definitely never have drinks with people I’ve “saved”, but it was kind of hard to explain why I was wearing tights and even harder to get away from Dean when he wouldn’t stop talking. I said I was an actor coming home from a show, but it didn’t hold much klout because Dean’s face lit like sunlight and he started asking about my super powers. (I don’t have any.)

          “Dude, really, you can tell me. I’m a great secret-keeper, like I never told anyone about how I hooked up with Sammy’s prom date. Man, he was pissed. Heh. Well, I mean, I guess now I told you, but…”

          I have had three beers and a shot of Jameson, to Dean’s sheer and utter delight (and insistence), and I don’t drink often enough for this. I can feel the bubbles from the beer raising the corners of my mouth. Dean is ridiculous.

          “So can you, like fly?”

          “Flying without a machine is physically impossible. Literally. Physics won’t allow it.”

          Dean frowns as though I was the one to break it to him, but quickly beams again. “You didn’t deny you were a superhero.”

          “I did, actually. Several times.”

          “But not that time!”

          “You can’t be serious.”

          He is serious.

          And I may be drunk, but I know that I can't keep him from hounding me, or talking, apparently, so I do the one thing that seems to have shut him up: I flag down the sweet-looking bartender and order two shots of whiskey. 

          Spreadsheets will be very difficult tomorrow. 

 

 


End file.
